Abstract
According to the instructions of the Minister of Labor José Antonio Girón de Velasco, promoter of the creation of Labor Universities, they would provide the means for Spain to bring culture to the workers and specially their children, so that they could ascend to upper scales of society. However, it didn’t escape to the regime·s interests that the new network presented the opportunity to concentrate all professional profiles related to labor studies and the new professions, especially industrialists, that were appearing. The system spread throughout the Spanish territory through a management model generally based in the direct appointment by, more often than not, renowned figures. However, its construction suffered from any ulterior plan to define how its development should unfold. Most complexes were placed in peripheral positions to the cities they were assigned to, mainly due to land availability and price. Other factors, such as the desire to achieve a certain isolation of the students , or the need for large farms whose exploitation would help to the financial support of the center, had also an influence. Such was the size, not only of the buildings but also of their population, and the ambition of many of these complexes, that some of them come to be considered as models or representations of any kind of ideal city, or at least, because of their scale, as large ensembles whose organization was based on a certain urban paradigm. On the other hand, both in the architecture and in the organization of these complexes, it is possible to check, throughout the time span of more than the three decades needed for their construction, the progressive influence that the Modern Movement had on Spanish professionals of the time. lt can be observed the evolution from the more radical rationalism-rejecting positions of the years of the Civil War and inmediate Postwar -in search of a not-yet-obtained national style that could not ignore some of the issues learned during the previous period- to the most avant-garde trends that review modernity in Europe just when this had begun to step back in Spain. There was in many cases, as a result, the conflict between the desire to recover a lost step in our own evolution of modern and the desire for a quick update with the moment’s highest international avant-garde, which usually come to the country with some delay. This modernization of the architecture would be developed at the same time than other social, political, economic and cultural processes that would pursue the progressive opening of the country to the outside, while the ruling forces would make use of architecture to project the most suitable image at each time. The evolution of Spanish architecture is evident from the analysis done about the strategies for general composition of the complexes, as well as through the detailed study of the design of the different parts, spaces or buildings that built up their projects, their hierarchy and zoning. lt is also possible to check this modernization through cross-cutting issues such as the use of materials and building systems, the use of regulatory frames and modular composition systems, the importance given to the empty space in the organization of projects, the layout of the circulatory solutions. the adaptation of the architecture to the pedagogical and hygienists reference concepts at each time, and even in artworks incorporated into buildings. In short, Labor Universities are a coherent set of buidings themselves and within the changing context of their time. Analyzing Labor Universities means analyzing the Spanish architecture or three decades, the span of time needed for their construction.
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